Introduction

10.1163/ej.9789004179547.i-398.6

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Chapter Summary

This is the introductory chapter of the book which is a collection of papers read at the international conference "'Genizat Germania': Hebrew and Aramaic Binding Fragments from German Archives and Libraries," held in Mainz in June 2007. The aim of the Mainz conference was to introduce a new project based at the Johannes Gutenberg-University and named 'Genizat Germania,' which is the first attempt to organise a systematic search for and cataloguing of all known Hebrew and Aramaic binding fragments in Germany, thereby following the predecessors in other European countries. Besides the fact that medieval Jewish authorities mentioned it in their legal responsa, it seems that already some Christian Hebraists, like Conrad Pellikan, were aware of the practice and occasionally took notice of Hebrew binding fragments. It is evident that a new attempt to (re)collect and identify every accessible Hebrew fragment in Germany is an urgent desideratum.